Her Life’s Work
The sounding revolutions of her wheels echoing off crumbling kaleidoscopic buildings reveal her. They are canyon walls, and each rotation is a chirping bird. The never-nesting waves of sound steadily make their way back and forth between the ancient structures. Her cawing metal bearings are insufficiently greased, calling out, “Eek, eek, eek.” Not ungreased for lack of care, but because she needs materials. She needs every bit of civilization’s left-behinds.
She caws back, speaking bird out loud, and testing the limit of her vocal cords with a chirp of her own. “Eek, eek, eek,” she calls, tilting her head back, as she projects the sound toward the walls for the echo. She laughs at herself.
She has become accustomed to the grinding of dry-rotted tread and creaking wheels. A residual sound from when the pavement pushed up at busy feet and rolling things, when her bike wheels were only two among countless others. She remembers when the hum of thick car tires on the asphalt behind her was a threat. But she no longer worries about traffic. She is the only traffic now. The cars have not moved for a lifetime. They are where they were, but their use vanished along with all the people.
The Earth swallowed them whole.
She was lonely in the beginning. She remembers now how she wept, writhing and convulsing for … she can’t even recall how long…
